Interlude
by December21st
Summary: In•ter•lude  n.  A short dramatic entertainment performed between the acts of a mystery or morality play.


"Interlude"

By December21st

Fandom: Fringe

Rating: PG

Pairing: Peter/Olivia

Warnings: Spoilers through "Northwest Passage"

Beta: Thanks to lone_pyramid for graciously agreeing to Beta this story. It is a better story due to her efforts.

Summary: In·ter·lude (n.) A short dramatic entertainment performed between the acts of a mystery or morality play. Written for LiveJournal's op_ficathon for paladin24, who requested "Olivia manages to track down and get to Peter before Walternate does, could occur at any point between his leaving and the end of NW Passage. I know, I know, not terribly original, but I wanna read more stories like that. Ha."

Peter steps into his room at the Northwest Passage, turning on only the dim light near the door. The last forty-eight hours have been exhausting – two young women found dead, one deputy sheriff rescued, personally bloodying the nose of a killer now behind bars, and his mind working on overdrive analyzing the weird phone calls (or did he just imagine them?) and seeing Newton here (or did he just imagine that too?) All on a grand total of about six hours of sleep. As tired as he is, it takes Peter a moment to realize that he's not the only one in the room. Adrenaline kicks in and his gun is half-drawn before he realizes that the form on the bed, breathing evenly with the cadence of someone sleeping deeply, is Olivia.

She's sleeping on top of the covers, on her side, a wisp of blonde hair falling across her face, draped across her nose. She's fully dressed, in a crisply efficient black jacket and slacks, her sensible black shoes tucked neatly under the edge of the bed. Peter wonders briefly if he should wake her, but she looks so peaceful. The determined air she usually projects has been replaced by something almost vulnerable.

After a moment, Peter goes to the closet and grabs the two gray wool blankets stashed there. He covers Olivia with one, tucking the edges around her shoulders. She makes an indecipherable noise in her sleep and burrows her face into the pillow even further. He moves to the other side of the bed and lies down on top of the covers next to her, his back to her, using the second blanket himself. Not exactly the mark of a gentleman, he thinks ruefully, but it's the best he can do under the circumstances. He's asleep before he can figure out what he's going to say to Olivia when she wakes up.

The night, so full of possibilities, passes uneventfully.

When Peter awakens, he's alone. Dingy gray light floods the room through the wispy curtains, the unrelenting cloud cover leeching all color from the world and making everything look drab. His sleep-fogged mind wonders if Olivia's presence was another dream or hallucination or whatever's been going on with him the last few days, but as he wakes up he becomes aware of shower noises coming from the bathroom. The other side of the bed still radiates a little residual heat. It makes Peter realize that he's cold, so he quickly scoots under the ugly patterned bedspread in an attempt to warm up. It's not like it's freezing outside, much less inside the room, but there's something about this region. He dressed for typical New England cool and rainy weather, but he wasn't prepared for the dampness that permeates everything in the Pacific Northwest, giving the early spring chill a chance to work its way deep into his bones. No wonder they drink so much coffee out here.

He manages to drag himself out of bed, feeling excessively rumpled, and pull a change of clothes out of his duffle bag by the time Olivia makes an appearance, dressed in black jeans and a gray pullover sweater . He realizes that he has no idea what to say to her; the way they left things the last time they spoke was more than a little uncomfortable. She must be feeling the same thing, because she smiles awkwardly at him and just says, "You better get in there while there's still some hot water left."

Peter takes the temporary reprieve in the spirit it was offered, saying, "Thanks, Olivia," with an easy grin. He goes through his own morning ablutions, emerging showered and clean-shaven from the bathroom last redecorated before he was born. The room is once again empty, but the hotel notepad bears a single word in Olivia's tidy script – "coffee."

About five minutes later, there's a light tapping at the door. Peter answers it to find Olivia holding two large, sturdy cups decorated with a creature that appears to be a bear/tree hybrid. She hands one to him and takes a sip from the other, the scent of coffee escaping with a wisp of steam. Peter swallows as much as he can in a single gulp, trying to get warm from the inside. He's not surprised when he realizes it's his usual espresso order.

"You're a lifesaver," he tells her, earning one of her sparkling smiles. "So how did you find me?"

"Broyles," Olivia explains. "You asked him not to tell Walter where you are. You didn't say anything about me."

Peter gets the oddest image of Olivia as a lovestruck teenage girl, asking Broyles, "Did he say anything about me?" But Olivia is about as far from having the personality of a teenage girl as anyone he knows.

"Okay, that explains part of it. But Broyles didn't know where I was staying. I didn't even register under my own name."

Olivia laughs. It's good to see her laugh. Peter missed it without even knowing that he missed it. "Well, finding people who don't want to be found _is_ part of my job description. Besides, Peter, Gene Cowan? Really?"

Peter chuckles. "Well, okay, I can see how that name might stand out to you." Peter's usually pretty good at disappearing when he wants to, and he's struck by how very good she is at her job.

He doesn't want to change the mood. It feels good to have Olivia here, talking over morning coffee, like nothing's happened. Like they're here on a case, comparing notes before heading out to the scene of some bizarre incident. He stares out the window at the solemn gray sky. He should get this over with.

"I'm not going back," he tells Olivia, looking at her, waiting for her to argue.

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly. "That's not why I'm here."

"Then why are you here?" Peter's puzzled. He figured she was here to try to convince him to get the band back together. To just ignore everything that happened, everything that he found out and to just go back to the way things were. Back when Walter was his father.

She's looking resolutely down at her shoes and the brown patterned carpet, and when she answers, she's so quiet that he barely hears her. "I don't know."

Of all the possible answers to his question that he imagined, that one wasn't even on his list. Peter steps closer to her, nudging her chin up with his forefinger so that she's looking at him and not at the floor. Except that now he doesn't know what to say to her either.

Olivia closes the short distance between them, locking Peter's eyes with her own. She tilts her head almost quizzically, stretching up the few inches that separate them until her mouth is a breath away from Peter's. Peter closes the remaining distance and presses his lips to hers.

Their first kiss is simple and chaste and tastes like coffee. They break apart after a few moments, some part of Peter worried that Olivia didn't like it; that this isn't what she wants at all. And that would be a great pity because he likes this and wants it very much.

Before he can spend too much time worrying about it, Olivia places her hand on the back of his neck and pulls him down for a second kiss. Their second kiss is everything that the first one was not – hungry and passionate, an exploration of lips and tongues, of teeth and mouths. Peter's mind blurs and when they finally separate he has no idea how long they've been standing there in the middle of his hotel room.

"Wow," he tells her, unable to suppress a broad grin.

"Yeah," Olivia agrees. She's practically radiating … not happiness, because that would be a little too out of character for his favorite F.B.I. agent, but … contentment?

They should … he has no idea what they should do next. Breakfast? He wants to tell Olivia about Krista Manning and listen to the CD he found.

Someone knocks at the door. Peter figures it's probably Sheriff Mathis with some sort of follow-up to yesterday's events. He hopes that Olivia will like her. When he answers, Peter briefly thinks that it's Walter, who has _also_ somehow managed to find him, but the man standing in the doorway has an authoritative, dispassionate presence that's the anathema of Walter's muddled genius.

It's his father.

End of Interlude.


End file.
